The scope of this article fits within critical geopolitics and border studies. The Croatian War of Independence started in 1991 as a result of the deep Yugoslav crisis and clashed ideas about the future of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in which Croatia was one of the republics. One of the first cities on the territory of Croatia that suffered open aggression and siege by the Serb-controlled Yugoslav People’s Army was the city of Vukovar. Officially restored to internationally recognized borders of Croatia in 1998, this city stays remembered as one of the most bombed cities in Europe after the World War II.

The case study of Vukovar is interesting because war legacy influenced new local policies and politics; open border issues affect bilateral relations on state level; and micro-regional frictions show deep identity-based divisions. Regardless of the lack of physical obstacles in the urban structure of the city, Novak and Zorko present multilevel divisions that are visible in a form of imagined boundaries. Although Vukovar is an ethnically divided city, the authors presume that those boundaries are hardly visualized. That is why Novak and Zorko used method of mental mapping on a random based sample of local population.

Nikola Novak

Researcher at CEI-IUL. PhD Candidate in History, Security and Defence Studies (ISCTE-IUL). His fields of study are security studies, history of former Yugoslavia, border studies, geopolitics and divided cities. Currently, he builds doctoral dissertation thesis about micro-geopolitical divisions and divided cities in post-Yugoslav countries. MA with focus on the role of diplomacy in the battle for international recognition of Croatia.